Remember Internment! End 42-Day Detention!
08/08/08
Of all the infamous crimes committed by the British government on Irish soil, internment must be ranked as one of the worst.
The suspension of habeas corpus, as it is quaintly known, saw hundreds of innocent Irish citizens abducted from their homes by British soldiers and thrown into prison camps for weeks, months and years on end without charge or trial. In addition to the terror inflicted upon their families, virtually all those abducted were badly beaten and many were tortured. The European Court of Human Right later indicted Britain for “cruel and inhuman treatment” as a result of their actions in August 1971.
With the introduction of internment, the British army launched a brutal offensive against nationalist communities throughout the Six Counties. In west Belfast’s Ballymurphy housing estate, 11 civilians were shot dead in a murderous three-day rampage by the notorious Parachute Regiment. Just months later, the same regiment committed the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, in an effort to drive people off the streets.
Internment lasted for five years and was replaced by the equally sinister conveyer belt system of injustice which, for hundreds of young nationalists and republicans, meant: arrest by the RUC and British army, transportation to an interrogation centre for systematic beatings and psychological torture, appearance before a one-man (unionist), no-jury Diplock court for sentencing and removal to the H-Blocks or Armagh Jail to become the cannon fodder in Britain’s criminalisation policy. As the world knows, the folly of Britain’s policy in this instance lead to the deaths of ten young men on hunger-strike.
Throughout the 1980s, many political prisoners languished in jails as a result of internment by remand or on the worthless word of a paid informer or supergrass.
Meanwhile, the Twenty-Six County state ruthlessly used the Offences Against the State Act to lock up those who dared show concern for the plight of the population in the North.
While there are thankfully fewer republican prisoners in the jails of the Dublin and London governments in 2008 than there was a decade ago, repressive legislation remains in the hands of both regimes.
In June this year, the British House of Parliament passed new detention legislation (the nine votes of the DUP proving crucial), which allows ‘suspects’ to be interrogated without charge or trial for 42-days straight.
While the British government has raised the spectre of ‘islamic fundamentalism’ in their efforts to pass the draconian bill, there is little doubt that the detention legislation will be used both against Irish republicans and vulnerable communities in Britain.
Prisons in the Six Counties could once again be filled with people guilty of nothing, bar having the misfortune to be pinpointed by a faceless spook or peeler.
Internment incensed a generation, and inspired them to stand up and fight against what was wrong. It was an indictment on the British government, a vindication of the Irish struggle for freedom and a lesson we must never forget.
Knowing what imprisonment without trial means, éirígí is calling on all republicans to join demonstrations tomorrow, not only in an act of remembrance, but also to challenge its modern equivalents.
The silence on this issue must be broken and the misplaced confidence of the British government that they can once again put people away without charge or trial must be shattered.
Bígí Linn!
The gathering points for éirígí protests are as follows.